The Rise of Open-Source Politics 492
Incognitius writes "There's a great article in this week's The Nation about the rise of open-source politics. Never before has the top-down world of presidential campaigning been opened to a bottom-up, networked community of ordinary voters. Applied to political organizing, open source means opening up participation in planning and implementation to the community, letting competing actors evaluate the value of your plans and actions, being able to shift resources away from bad plans and bad planners and toward better ones, and expecting more of participants in return. What do you guys think, is open source a good model for politics?"
Re:What I'm wondering is... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:What I'm wondering is... (Score:5, Insightful)
We can only see good from this (Score:5, Insightful)
OMFG TEH OPEN SOURCE!! LEET (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:What I'm wondering is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Futhermore, you are fighting the Great Myth of the American Inventor, and the idea that the patent/copyright system are the foundations of American Industry and its cultural influence.
Most engineers, songwriters, and filmmakers support the IP system as it stands. This is only an issue on GNU/Lunatic Fringe places like slashdot.
Re:What I'm wondering is... (Score:2, Insightful)
Once we've finished with the war, fixed the medical system, social security, homeland security, the environment, etc., then maybe we can talk about open source software. Open source software issues are only on the minds of an incredibly tiny portion of the US population, so why should a politician who has limited time talk about it? Health care and social security affect everyone, so you're going to focus about those issues.
besides, I highly doubt Bush/Kerry/just about all politicians have much insight into open source software, or even software in general...
Re:What I'm wondering is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you are a special interest with lots of money to buy a politician your pet issue will not have a voice in government circles. That is the way the system works.
If you want to force politicians to bring these issues to the forefront you will need to pass the hat and collect a sizeable wad of cash which may eventually attract a politician that you can sway to push your issue.
So pass the hat and start looking for a congress critter of your very own.
Re:Open Source? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What I'm wondering is... (Score:2, Insightful)
zerg (Score:5, Insightful)
Open-Source Politics means: "I think Republicans are idiots. What's this? Lord Omlette says I shouldn't treat Republicans as idiots? FUCK THAT NOISE! I'ma ignore him and surf a different website. Oooh look, this blog agrees w/ me that Republicans are idiots. Hurray for the Internet!"
All the nifty tools and new communications paradigms are not going to change a goddamned thing until we get back to recognizing that the opposing force are Americans, same as us.
Simple answer (Score:5, Insightful)
Emphatically, yes! (Score:3, Insightful)
Open Politics is, in many ways, what grass roots politics is supposed to be. In the current system I think it has turned into the national parties manipulating the local people, though I speak only for my own locale.
The Republicans are just coming to terms with the notion that their base is comprised, to quote one Republican polster, of "theocrats" - people who believe not that a theocracy is desirable, but that the separation of Church and State has been overemphasized to the nation's detriment. That's who won the 2004 election, and it will be very hard to deny that movement. Democrats should not make the mistake of dismissing the theocrats or ignoring the intellectual and numeric strength of the movement.
The Democrats need new intellectual vigor, and tapping in to the Open Politics movement seems like a natural for them.
If the Republicans embrace Open Politics, I don't know what effect that will have. If neither major party embraces it, then a huge vacuum is opened up for one of the minor parties to fill.
Re:zerg (Score:4, Insightful)
Not with our voting system... (Score:5, Insightful)
They've even convinced us that it even goes down to the very fabric of our being... Who are you? A Liberal, or A Conservative? So it's vitally important to *them* that *they* be the ones to draw the line... make the definition. But of course it's not true. You can believe whatever you want about any different issue. Son of Reagan shows up at the DNC to promote stem cells... and people are SHOCKED.
But no politician has to worry about the lines being blurred when it's a battle of Us or Them. Not until you destroy that paradigm can you begin to have influence.
Politics? We already have an idea (Score:3, Insightful)
The two projects could have merged long ago if only they didn't have such different models at the time. Can they merge now? Doesn't seem like it. And that division would seem to mirror the kind of division we might see in "open source politics" of the future.
I can only imagine that two camps out there might have "the best answer" to global warming, renewable energy, clear air, keeping the nation's unemployment rate down, managing terrorist threat, you name it.
I can see an open source model for research projects, however. The trouble is, people with money care more about profit than progress... then again, that's how they become people with money now isn't it.
I think the idea has merit but I can also see where it would be supressed or at the very least competed against by commercial interests so it wouldn't be enough that OS public activities would be competing against themselves but also against commercial interests. Is it a good idea? Yeah... I think so. If for no other reason than to maintain and incentive to keep politics close enough to the people that it's never completely out of the public's reach.
Democrats need Republican votes (Score:4, Insightful)
They put the Republicans on the defensive which resulted in Bush being re-elected, the Republicans getting a larger margin in the house and senate and the minority leader losing his job. The first time that's happened in 50 years.
I think the problem was that the Democrats thought they were in the majority judging by all the various polls and world opinion and they didn't need "idiots" voting for their guy. Turns out they really were the minority.
Re:zerg (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems to me that differentiating themselves from Republicans has been a losing strategy, not winning strategy. Republicans have a fixed top-down message that is easily and often repeated. You can't fight it with having a more complex opinion on anything. If it took you more than 5 seconds to explain your position in a witty quip you lost the sound-bite war and are immediately cast as an effette ivory tower liberal who is "out of touch" because apparently "in touch" means supporting simplistic nice-sounding policies that get votes today without any regard for long term effects.
Hasn't this election been a refutation of "open source politics"? Republicans got out their base, and although they did do a lot of grassroots politicking, the message was still based on agenda bullet points. It was still the Cathedral, not the Bazaar. Democrats are the Bazaar with a lot of disparate and less clear cut factions, without strict adherence to absolutist positions. The Cathedral is going to win over. More people attend and are influenced by Cathedrals in this country than Bazaars.
I think it is clear that to compete Democrats have to start fighting this Noise War. That's why they started Air America to compete with conservative talk radio. But to compete they need to stick to a very few, very well-defined, divisive, and visceral positions, and just hammer them relentlessly. Frankly I think that goes against the grain of the whole left which has rested on the notion that the truth will set them free, and if people just know the truth they'll vote correctly. But truth is not always simple and not always sound-bite-ready, and I don't know if it is a winning strategy. The only way it could be is if they somehow astro-turf crazily but that's dishonest.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Open Source == Communism/Fascism (Score:2, Insightful)
Now I can't comment on specific members of the open source community, but the open-source movement itself is, although with many metaphorical flaws, is a good example of a modern collective. Developing a stream of production and distribution for the common good, that is roughly equivalent to many other non-capitalist alternatives, growing in strength everyday.
I don't have time to clean up what probably were poorly worded, unsubstantiated statements, or dive further into what could be the subject of a doctoral dissertation, so I apologize if that was all completely incoherent or inaccurate.
Re:Makes me think about Groklaw (Score:2, Insightful)
The fact is that people who state this aren't really what opensource is looking for anyways. Opensource in and of itself is a pretty much a violation of the key ruleset of capitalism. Therefore, people with money, who can throw it around - don't really care for something that isn't interested in making a substantial profit, and gaining power. These two in tandem are key for capitalism to continue. However, open source politics CAN make money. Why? B/c if people have the choice to put people in power, and more people are donating their free time to help a politician, more money will be generated as a result. For whom though? The political parties, underlings, and so forth involved in the effort. I do not think this is an original idea, but simply a swing in the opposite direction of U.S. Politics. It was not so long ago that people were much more activley involved in politiking, and seeking to help out their neighborhood politicians. It is only recently (within the last 35-40 years), that people have decidedly forgotten about U.S. politics. Increasingly over time people have been forced to forego their political ideas, and thoughts in order to attain marginal gain. This is dangerous, and I do think that more involvement is needed on behalf of the people's part. They should keep in mind though that what they say should offer NEW ideas, and improvement to already existing entity - not simply respewed zealotry. The last election was a prime example of such things though.
Why stop with politics? (Score:2, Insightful)
Amateur hour (Score:2, Insightful)
Consider the example of the "Kos Dozen." As the referenced article describes, Markos Moulitsas runs the Daily Kos [dailykos.com] political blog, and is probably the most successful blog fundraiser for democratic candidates, raising (according to his site) about $750K. Of that, $550K went to a list of 15 candidates he endorsed and targeted, the inaccurately named "Kos Dozen." [actblue.com]
Moulitsas claimed that all these candidates could win, and bragged about helping some candidates that the Democratic Party bigwigs hadn't supported enough. For example, he raised a lot of money for Ginny Shrader, running for Congress in Pennsylvania's 8th District, and he said [dailykos.com]:
Maybe the DCCC was right after all, because in a Democratic district that Clinton, Gore and Kerry all won, Shrader lost by an 11-point margin. In fact, of the 15 candidates Moulitsas targeted for help, ALL of them were defeated. Despite his optimism about their chances, four were demolished by 3:2, 2:1 or even 5:2 margins, and five more (including Shrader) lost by 10-12 points. Only three races were even close.I don't know if there were more deserving candidates and races that Moulitsas could have directed the money to, but I suspect there were. It's great he could raise so much money from small donors (the average donation was about $100), but a lot of it may have been wasted because of poor targeting choices.
Morale of the story: Sometimes the party bigwigs really do know strategy better than the masses, and trying to "strategize by committee" through a blog is not necessarily a good way to help a campaign.
Maybe not as revolutionary as it may seem... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's bad. (Score:1, Insightful)
Example. Say I'm a Republican wondering if Bush is really doing the right thing. I want to have an open mind and I go looking. What will I learn?
- MichaelMoore.com will spin an insane conspiracy web and try to sell me books.
- Democrats.com will list every bad thing that's happened this week and try to blame it on Bush.
- Indymedia will tell us about the last fucking fatass cop somebody posted a photo of, eating a doughnut.
- Hundreds of independent blogs will rehash these stories and more, and add their own comments and spin and twists on it all, with varying degrees of accuracy and objectivity.
- And every single one of these sources will tell me that they are the One True Source of Facts.
The wonderful thing about the Internet is that literally anybody can find their voice and an audience. Problem is, I (the Republican) have given up my search for enlightenment because I don't know who to believe.The point is that an infinite number of viewpoints is NOT a good thing when you're trying to get a coherent message across. Bush didn't beat the Democrats, the Democrats beat themselves.
Re:Simple answer (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is half the problem with the laws in the first place.
Using OSS Politics to get Dean in the DNC? (Score:2, Insightful)
Before Dean ran, no one thought the Democrats could possibly win (or even raise more money than the president). When he started campaigning, he was the only one landing blows on Bush at all. Shifting the party right is useless (see the past 3 decades). If we sign this, we might keep losing elections, but we'll be losing them for a party we want to vote for and respect. I'm sick of this GOP lite shit. As far as I'm concerned, if the Democrats don't nominate Dean, they have one chance left to earn my loyalty before I'm through. And I'm only 20 =/
-Oobob
Re:What I'm wondering is... (Score:4, Insightful)
IP law is like lawyers: for every one on the right side, there is another one on the wrong side.
What is old is new (Score:4, Insightful)
Democracy is SUPPOSED to be open source (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway personally I wonder what the point is - this election was supposed to show the rise of the bloggers, digerati and all the rest of it. What's the point when Dubya just gets voted back into power?
Re:What I'm wondering is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Most musicians (the performers, many of whom are also songwriters) recognize that the current system of IP severely overvalues the minor contribution of record companies while largely screwing the people who actually make the music happen. They just grit their teeth because they feel that they have no alternatives. There's a difference between indifference and despair.
Filmmakers... well, that also depends on who you ask, and on how you word the question.
Re:What I'm wondering is... (Score:2, Insightful)
Not to mention stopped all this welfare! [stopwelfare.com] Now that's a tax break we can all get behind.
Re:The era of top-down politics ... is over? (Score:3, Insightful)
If the individual becomes powerful enough to threaten existing power structures through technology, I'm sure your questions will all be answered. Until then, what harm can be done increasing the power of the individual?
"The Nation" mag is centrist in Europe (Score:3, Insightful)
And in most western european countries, all citizens are entitled to healthcare. Here in America. 45 million go without, and someone goes bankrupt from medical costs about once every seconds (or thereabouts). In NW Europe, students do not get out of school loaded down with tens of thousands of dollars in debt, and have to work at McDonalds after that. In most NW Europe countries, their tax dollars go to things like state funded child care and education, instead of killing thousands of innocent civilians.
Re:True open-source.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:My turn to by cynical... (Score:3, Insightful)
In effect the current two parties we have to choose from are identical. The only real difference is who gets OUR money once they take it away from us in taxes. There won't be really major changes in the system simply because a different party controls the white house. There will be a few people that get more of our money than the ones that did the last time around. So in many ways it is amazing that as many people vote as there is. And look at this last election, there were a couple of states that had not even completed their counts when the election was declared over. So in effect a few entire states votes did not even count. This time around Ohio was really the only state's votes that really mattered. The time before it came down to what Florida voted. The rest of the country did not really matter in either case.
Emergence Politics (Score:2, Insightful)
Politics without a doubt should be like this. No person or group of persons should ever be in control. Even with programming, it seems we're always best off when we build our systems to learn and take care of themselves at the most fundamental level. I would love to have an Emergence Party, both political and for fun!
Re:zerg (Score:4, Insightful)
A radio station devoted to leftwing propaganda, hosted by all the people who the Right love to hate, when they've already got a good chunk of the center convinced that the gays and the blacks are trying to take over the country, and make people accept gay marriage, etc. (suckers, buying into all that fearmongering) - but you see, Air America worked AGAINST their own cause, by galvanizing the Right even more.
What the Left (or really, the Center) in America needs, is simply a place to air the truth. Not leftwing propaganda, or anti-right hate. Just a place to call out facts, and very strongly backed-up facts (like the al QaQaa issue, etc. - - not the TANG story, because though it's very compelling, there's just plain not enough hard facts to conclude anything). The corporate-dominated media is weak right now. Not just on bias in story selection, but also in their utter lack of fact-checking. Air America could have gone a long way in making the truth obvious and apparent to Americans - but instead, they fell for Rove's divisive tactics, and just played the other side, attacking people for their beliefs, calling them stupid rednecks- and gawd, that one woman had to say something about being a Lesbian every single day. That's supposed to win-over voters in the center?
Re:What I'm wondering is... (Score:5, Insightful)
While you may have a point that the people that designed Kerry's site were better informed about the technology they were using(as evidenced by the html comments in the site...), do you really think that Bush asked his webmasters/designers to go make sure his site was hosted on a Microsoft machine? It was probably more along the lines of a friends recommendation "yes mr. president, sir. I've used this company before and whenever the site goes down they're always right there fixing it..."
open source government (Score:3, Insightful)
One of the main stories of the 20th century is corruption in the munitions industry. Until that is addressed, we, in the USA, are at the mercy of the arms dealers.
It could also address the problem/myth of the 'welfare queens', slackers living off social programs.
Quite One-Sided (Score:2, Insightful)
Undermined? They caught Dan Rather red-handed spreading phony documents about the President. And the article further trivializes this by listing it along with John Stewart's rant.
This article carefully avoids mentioning right-wing and Iraqi blogs, but I think they had an effect. For the first time, the media lost control of the "message". Also, the article only mentions military blogs run by unhappy troops. All the military blogs I've seen were pro-America and pro-war.
For a taste of what the article missed, check out Iraq The Model [blogspot.com] and Chrenkoff [blogspot.com].
Re:What I'm wondering is... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:What I'm wondering is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Could it be that by smaking a big deal of unimportant issues (like software licensing
I disagree. Patent and copyright law is a thing that is going to affect everybody for generations to come, even if most of the electorate doesnt appreciate the importance.
As people move into an increasingly virtual world (with everything from books to movies to MMRPGs to online bank statements) IP touches everybody in a major way.
How the law is structured will have a major affect on every citizens life. Do you want to live in an M$ controlled world or a democracy? I vote for a democracy.
---
It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.
Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.
Re:The Cathedral and the Bazaar (Score:1, Insightful)
Now the news and editorials come from everywhere. We can discuss the same issue with hundreds of people in a day. Opinions can be formed with the help of a diverse and eclectic group of people. While this system scares traditional news outlets like daily papers, local tv and radio stations, it works very well. It is the bazaar.
I think you're overestimating human nature a bit. People like to feel good, smart, and right. They are also damn lazy. Having many sources of media won't open people's minds, it will just let them choose the "news" that already fits their existing biases and zone in on that. The right will be up watching Fox News, and the left will be viewing Michael Moore's latest "documentary" drivel.
It's more comfortable to be in your own little universe where everyone already agrees with you than to be pushed out into the cruel world where you might have to actually think for a change. I'm sure some people will want to honestly explore the arguements of the other side, but most will be content to simply pass on the petty strawman arguements they're fed by their own side. After all, the strawman arguements have convinced them that the other side is filled with idiots anyway.
I think the explosion of available media is only going to fragment things more, as everyone can settle into a custom news/commentary niche. It will stay that way until people prefer truth to feeling good about themselves.
I'm not holding my breath.
Re: Not with our voting system... (Score:3, Insightful)
But I agree with your general idea. Almost any voting method would be better than the current system, and people need to be aware just how much it's hurting the political landscape in many countries.
(People also need to be aware that political character is more than just a one-dimensional left-vs-right range. People's assessments of the balance of power between government and people, between government and business, between minorities and the mainstream, &c. aren't necessarily the same. There's a thought-provoking site here [f2s.com] which explains this rather well.)
Re:Agreement and Journal Entry plug (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd have to disagree with that. What about:
1) device drivers
2) proprietary video/audio codecs
3) ArcGIS
4) AutoCAD
5) Statistica
6) many games
Numbers 1-2 stopped me from migrating my Dad to linux, while numbers 3-5 keep me locked into a Windows world.
I've found that some people believe that specialized software will remain proprietary. Others choose to live in a self-imposed "island of freedom", limiting what they can do on a computer. In any case, I don't think its accurate to say all types of software are headed to be open-source. Its a nice myth, but unfortunately not the case currently.
Re:My turn to by cynical... (Score:2, Insightful)
Only if you listen to their positions as represented by their opponents. As stated by the candidates themselves, their positions were effectively identical.
Re:zerg (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What I'm wondering is... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want to change the values of the masses, you have to succeed in explaining why your values have a place in their lives.
Re:The era of top-down politics ... is over? (Score:3, Insightful)
That, and strictly limited government. The founders had the right idea, but for all the emphasis they put on limiting the powers of government, it wasn't enough.
The bottom line is that power will be abused, no matter who has it. There is no way around it. The best we can do, therefore, is to limit the amount of power available for abuse.
In a nutshell, the less power available to those who control government, the less trouble they will cause. Simple, yet absolutely critical.
Re:What I'm wondering is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not if it is a piece of history. Zapruder shouldn't have the right to prevent someone from making a documentary saying that JFK was assassinated by communist teamsters on the grassy knoll, and neither should FOX be able to tell any documentary filmmaker that they don't want unflattering footage of the president to be used in a documentary. We're no longer talking about justifiable financial recompense for effort invested, we're now talking about controlling history for political reasons. No studio should weild exclusive control over images of public figures for their own purposes.
Re:What I'm wondering is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Speaking of Canadians it was on CNN Morning this morning that the day after the election the number of hits on the Canadian immigration info site, from Americans looking to bail, spiked like 6X and set a new daily record.
I don't think it registered with Canadian immigration or CNN they were slashdotted since the URL was posted on one of the Slashdot threads about people who were considering leaving America now that it appears its turning in to a right wing police state dominated by intolerant bible thumpers, and may be for a very long time unless there is a major backlash.
I only pray a new third party arises out of the ashes of the Democratic party and moderate Republicans when they realize their party has been usurped by right wing extremists and bible thumpers.
I'd like to see a party that is moderate on social issues, but which strongly favors small government and lower taxes for the middle class, kind of like where McCain, Guilianni and Arnold are but who completely divorce themselves from the New Republican party. Thats the group in America totally abandoned by both parties and I wager its a large one. Maybe it would a little like Libertarians but not so far out on the fringe.
If the Democrats want to win again they need to stop pandering to their special interests, unions, trial lawyers, Hollywood celebs, minorities and gays and target middle Americans for a change. That list of special interests does turn off middle Americans and insures they wont win the South or Midwest. And of course they need to find some candidates that don't suck as bad as Kerry, and I'm not sure there are any in the Democratic party. I assure you the New Republicans are salivating at the prospect of running against Hillary in 2008.
... turn that one around (Score:2, Insightful)
I guess it depends on what you consider a "shambles". Our Vice President is what they used to call a war profiteer.
In early 2000, our president was warning about an energy crisis. I saw it on CNN, followed by a commercial for Enron. 18 months later it was clear that a) the shortage was engineered by Enron, and b) Enron was tightly connected to the Whitehouse.
That None of these issues were brought up in the prez campaign is not a good sign. That no one cares as long as they have enough cash for beer is a disgrace.
I guess it also depends on what you consider "moderate". If you think Bush is a moderate... either you aren't paying attention, or you think Mussolini-style Fascism mixed with bullheaded religious sanctimony is a good idea.
"island of freedom" (Score:3, Insightful)
Before, I needed to buy, or get through my friends copies of proprietary software to do trivial things I needed. Now I have the software to do everything I do, and I can even sell what I produce, without paying royalties to anyone.
That was a show-stopper, because a single project requires a lot of OCX components when developing for Windows, and it forces you to either reinvent the wheel every time, or to pay astronomical fees to develop software. Plus you need to study lots of strange licenses, and understand them. That, effectively, was limiting.
Add to that the fact that I couldn't pay most of the software I used, and you will understand why I feel much less limited now that I use only free software.
Even if I were rich, there is a limit to the amount of money one can reasonably throw at software.
Add to that the fact that the skills I learned on the GNU/Linux system give me lots of power over my computer that I couldn't dream to have on Windows. I can make my computer do exactly what I want, not just what some configuration wizard will allow me.
Absolute freedom cannot be attained. You (or at least somebody else) always have to lose some freedom in order to attain other.
I believe people are less limited, and more free when running a free system.
Libertarians (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously. Michael Badnarik, the 2004 presidential candidate, is a programmer. The http://www.lp.org/ web page runs on FreeBSD and Apache.
The things you complain about are not "political issues" because the mainstream press and their butt-buddies, the two faces of the Party of State Power, all agree that Copyright and Patent should cover everything and the mere "citizen" has no rights at all.
Bob-